"Good gracious, no! I have not the least doubt you will explain matters
satisfactorily to your wife, for I have always heard that practise makes
perfect."
Mr. Charteris laughed--a low and very musical laugh.
"Of me, then, Patricia?"
"I--I think it is rather of myself I am afraid. Oh, I hate you when you
smile like that! You have evil eyes, Jack! Stop it! Quit hounding me
with your illicit fascinations." The hand she had raised in threatening
fashion fell back into her lap, and she shrugged her shoulders once
more. "My nerves are somewhat upset by the approaching prospect of
connubial felicity, I suppose. Really, though, _mon ami_, your conceit
is appalling."
Charteris gave vent to a chuckle, and raised the door-key to his lips.
"When you are quite through your histrionic efforts," he suggested,
apologetically, "I will proceed with my amorous pipings. Really,
Patricia, one might fancy you the heroine of a society drama, working up
the sympathies of the audience before taking to evil ways. Surely, you
are not about to leave your dear, good, patient husband, Patricia?
Heroines only do that on dark and stormy nights, and in an opera
toilette; wearing her best gown seems always to affect a heroine in that
way."
Mr. Charteris, at this point, dropped the key-ring, and drew nearer to
her; his voice sank to a pleading cadence.
"We are in Arcadia, Patricia; virtue and vice are contraband in this
charming country, and must be left at the frontier. Let us be adorably
foolish and happy, my lady, and forget for a little the evil days that
approach. Can you not fancy this to be Arcadia, Patricia?--it requires
the merest trifle of imagination. Listen very carefully, and you will
hear the hoofs of fauns rustling among the fallen leaves; they are
watching us, Patricia, from behind every tree-bole. They think you a
dryad--the queen of all the dryads, with the most glorious eyes and hair
and the most tempting lips in all the forest. After a little, shaggy,
big-thewed ventripotent Pan will grow jealous, and ravish you away from
me, as he stole Syrinx from her lover. You are very beautiful, Patricia;
you are quite incredibly beautiful. I adore you, Patricia. Would you
mind if I held your hand? It is a foolish thing to do, but it is
preëminently Arcadian."
She heard him with downcast eyes; and her cheeks flushed a pink color
that was agreeable to contemplation.
"Do--do you really care for me, Jack?" she asked, softly; then cried,
"No, no, you needn't answer--because, of course, you worship me madly,
unboundedly, distractedly. They all do, but you do it more convincingly.
You have been taking lessons at night-school, I dare say, at all sorts
of murky institutions. And, Jack, really, cross my heart, I always
stopped the others when they talked this way. I tried to stop you, too.
You know I did?"
She raised her lashes, a trifle uncertainly, and withdrew her hand from
his, a trifle slowly. "It is wrong--all horribly wrong. I wonder at
myself, I can't understand how in the world I can be such a fool about
you. I must not be alone with you again. I must tell my
husband--everything," she concluded, and manifestly not meaning a word
of what she said.
"By all means," assented Mr. Charteris, readily. "Let's tell my wife,
too. It will make things so very interesting."
"Rudolph would be terribly unhappy," she reflected.
"He would probably never smile again," said Mr. Charteris. "And my
wife--oh, it would upset Anne, quite frightfully! It is our altruistic,
nay, our bounden duty to save them from such misery."
"I--I don't know what to do!" she wailed.
"The obvious course," said he, after reflection, "is to shake off the
bonds of matrimony, without further delay. So let's elope, Patricia."
Patricia, who was really unhappy, took refuge in flippancy, and laughed.
"I make it a rule," said she, "never to elope on Fridays. Besides, now
I think of it, there is, Rudolph--Ah, Rudolph doesn't care a button's
worth about me, I know. The funny part is that he doesn't know it. He
has simply assumed he is devoted to me, because all respectable people
are devoted to their wives. I can assure you, _mon ami_, he would be a
veritable Othello, if there were any scandal, and would infinitely
prefer the bolster to the divorce-court. He would have us followed and
torn apart by wild policemen."
Mr. Charteris meditated for a moment.
"Rudolph, as you are perfectly aware, would simply deplore the terribly
lax modern notions in regard to marriage and talk to newspaper reporters
about this much--" he measured it between thumb and forefinger
--"concerning the beauty and chivalry of the South. He would
do nothing more. I question if Rudolph Musgrave would ever in any
circumstances be capable of decisive action."
"Ah, don't make fun of Rudolph!" she cried, quickly. "Rudolph can't help
it if he is conscientious and in consequence rather depressing to live
with. And for all that he so often plays the jackass-fool about women,
like Grandma Pendomer, he is a man, Jack--a well-meaning, clean and
dunderheaded man! You aren't; you are puny and frivolous, and you sneer
too much, and you are making a fool of me, and--and that's why I like
you, I suppose. Oh, I wish I were good! I have always tried to be good,
and there doesn't seem to be a hatpin in the world that makes a halo
sit comfortably. Now, Jack, you know I've tried to be good! I've never
let you kiss me, and I've never let you hold my hand--until to-day--
and--and----"
Patricia paused, and laughed.
"But we were talking of Rudolph," she said, with a touch of weariness.
"Rudolph has all the virtues that a woman most admires until she
attempts to live in the same house with them."
"I thank you," said Mr. Charteris, "for the high opinion you entertain
of my moral character." He bestowed a reproachful sigh upon her, and
continued: "At any rate, Rudolph Musgrave has been an unusually lucky
man--the luckiest that I know of."
Patricia had risen as if to go. She turned her big purple eyes on him
for a moment.
"You--you think so?" she queried, hesitatingly.
Afterward she spread out her hands in a helpless gesture, and laughed
for no apparent reason, and sat down again.
"Why?" said Patricia.
It took Charteris fully an hour to point out all the reasons.
Patricia told him very frankly that she considered him to be talking
nonsense, but she seemed quite willing to listen.